


Blackberry Meringue

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: Centaur Viermer, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Griffon Anna, Humour, OCS include, Oneshot, Tarantula Vanessa, among other characters - Freeform, birthday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: Griffon Minos gets to throw a very elaborate masquerade ball for his birthday every year. Lune, and also the entire Griffon Division, are more of the opinion that they can do better for him with less planning before the big event.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 7





	Blackberry Meringue

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday Minos ye fucker. Not sorry Lune got to hijack the fic. He's allowed, I don't write him enough, and he gets fridged too much.  
> This fic was... actually edited, lmao. I made it like 500 words longer 'cause I thought it needed it.  
> Edit: For anyone who's having a hard time visualizing the instruments, [this](https://kingofthewilds.tumblr.com/post/159557784720) is what they're doing. :p  
> Also, slight warning of mentioned MiAlba. It's like two words but it's there. It's my usual MiAlba, as always.

"Shhh. Come now, be _quiet_ ," Lune murmured, his long, thick demon’s tail tight around Byaku’s wrist and tugging him along. Byaku slipped forward with him, creeping along the side of the long Judecca hallway. His face had shifted more into his therian guise, less skin and flesh and more a deformed mask of solid bone, with a surprising lack of gore. They needed to be silent as Spectres, even more so against their fellows who generally knew they were there. They’d slipped out of their surplices and shifted farther from humanity, allowing their cosmos to fade into the necessary background magic of the Meikai. They needed to be untraceable.

They crept down the hallway, as quick as they could without being seen or dropping their charge on the floor. Veronica would kill them both if they did, and they’d deserve it. The scent of it would probably give them away if anything did – sugary treats usually didn’t leave the servants’ halls until they’d made it to where they were supposed to be; and anyone baking was well aware that any opportunity to thieve something sweet would be taken. They wouldn’t be the only ones baking a cake, at least not for this, but Lune was willing to bet that any cake that he, Byaku, and Veronica had teamed up on was going to be leagues better than anything Rhadamanthys and Aiacos were capable of putting together. Veronica had claimed decorating the cake, and they’d done a wonderful job, all butterflies and fake-gore and illegible, if beautiful, cursive icing.

Hells, they really did have the entire division working together on this one. Veronica was in charge of decorating, Anna had the food, Vanessa and Viermer had the duty of keeping Minos distracted until exactly twelve-fifteen. Albafica and Tokusa were stuck on sorting out the official dinner party, of which they’d been working for a few days to ensure everything would go over well; they’d need to be fetched when the party was ready. But first, they were throwing him a party of just their division, those who actually knew him by more than his name and reputation in the army. He would have full command over the dinner party, so it was up to them to make him profoundly uncomfortable and unnerved over lunch.

Byaku slipped forward past him, checking the hallways ahead of them. "Pandora’s up ahead, you _know_ she’ll tell on us. Drop into the shadows, now." Lune shrugged.

He stepped backward and dropped into the shadows of the wall behind him. The only marking that there was anything there but solid stone was the candleholder above it – a silver, blooming flower, instead of the usual simple design. The candles in the Underworld burned a soft blue-violet witchlight, as opposed to the scarlet prison's-fire. So many tells, and yet so few ever appreciated them for what they were.

The shadows welcomed him into a soft, roughly-hewn stone tunnel, warmer than the halls of Judecca that he was just in. Byaku ducked in behind him, sealing the entrance with a sweep of his hand. "We'll take the main route down, past the kitchen," Lune hissed, keeping his voice low. They couldn't be seen, but they could still be heard. That was by design. If someone was screaming for help, it wouldn't make sense to hide them so completely. "Fastest route, and we're running late."

"Busiest route, you mean," Byaku corrected, allowing Lune to drag him along through the tunnels at the fastest pace they could muster up while still being quiet. Not quite a run, but faster than a quick walk. It was good they had a sheet cake in hand and not a towering tiered cake; Lune would've already tripped and destroyed it by now, with his luck. "Take the left ahead, it'll keep us out of the way of the servants."

"Our servants phase in and out of physicality as they please, and they also know how to dodge each other," he snipped right back. "They can deal with us trying to be incognito." The hallway broke into a cleared-out room, nothing but an intersection of hallways with a table off to one side at waist-level. The light glowed soft, ambient throughout the room with no discernible source. There would be runes carved into the corners of the ceiling, providing light and heat and ley lines for their cosmos. They hadn't been renewed in a thousand years, and they wouldn't need to for another thousand at least.

The room was, however, occupied. "Hand that over before you drop it," commanded a young, annoyed-sounding feminine voice. One of the servants, a good foot shorter than him, swept around him and pulled the sheet cake from his hands. Her face was hidden behind her veil, her skirt large and flaring around her ankles with the weight of at least one petticoat. She had a lion's tail, a tassel of lace-trimmed black satin tied nicely around the end. In one pocket glittered the griffon's charm that stated she was also someone's apprentice. The stars in her cosmos identified her further, sharp and dead and bright with unforgiving, sugary-sweet sadism.

"We can take it, Anna," Byaku said. "Needs to be in the breakroom about five minutes ago. You also need to be in the breakroom five minutes ago."

She flicked her tail at him in annoyance, and tilted her head back at them. Lune could almost feel her sizing him up, debating whether it was worth risking Minos' anger to show them their own spines. If it was one thing he enjoyed nobody outside the Meikai knowing, it was that the Spectre servants were often bloodier-minded than the Spectres themselves. Most made up for the lack of enough cosmos with impressive amounts of weapons. The ones that did have awakened cosmos were the scary ones – those were in line for surplices, and they didn't play nice. "Then follow along, and I won't have to gut you," she answered.

He hesitated for a moment, and then started to run after her. Unlike him, Anna was perfectly capable of carrying things and running at full speed at the same time. She wasn't so clumsy. He still almost ran into two servants, dodging one and accidentally running into the other one, who simply phased through him as if they were dead, and they were, and he yelped an apology as he ran.

"Why does she get to go all incorporeal and we don't?" Byaku muttered just behind him, speeding up a little until he could slip his hand into Lune's and keep running alongside him, so neither one got lost. They'd been doing it since they were trainees. They ran quick down the hallways, following Anna as she darted to make twists and turns that they didn't expect: this couldn't be the fastest way to the breakroom, but also, she knew these routes better than they did.

Most of the servants they passed were preparing for the dinner party later that night. Most Spectres celebrated their birthdays with their division and their friends, along with the tradition of being forced to wear a party hat of scavenged parchment and glue all day. The Judges were allowed the privilege of throwing proper parties, and since everyone agreed that the Meikai just didn't get to throw enough parties in general, this was allowed. Minos had insisted, as he had every year that he was alive for the past few reincarnations, that they should throw a full masquerade ball for his birthday, and wasn't that just the kind of party everyone craved?

They weren't often given the chance to dress formally. Spectres were ruthless, therianthropic folk, often shifting from human to animal and back again with their own anger, and all the stages in between. Most other kingdoms wouldn't allow them to join a ball without looking perfectly human, and they would always have to coax tails into trousers and set hats over horns, and pretend to be something that none of them really remembered being, or could ever be again.

But when they threw their own parties… Horns were wrapped in lilies and roses and fur was brushed to a polished shine, tails were adorned with jewels and scales glimmered with accentuated pigments. They pulled out their finest clothes, picking perfumes and colognes of all the strange life and death they could bottle, and showed off what they looked like when they were trying to look classy, and terrifying, and beautiful in all their Spectre glory.

Lune ducked under a low ceiling, avoiding smacking his own horns on the sudden drop before it evened out again. Before all the dancing and the formal dinner would come a celebratory lunch, and that meant surprising Minos with something a little less gaudy for his birthday. He imagined the surprise on Minos' face when he realized what they'd been up to all morning, and kept running.

The darkness parted before them and they stepped through the wall, finding themselves in the breakroom. Tokusa had already managed to slip away from the main decorating and had settled atop a chair in the corner, eyeing them mistrustfully. Lune had noted that he generally always looked like that, and his cosmos indicated he was far more interested in staking a claim in the cake over anything else. Anna was stuffing candles into said cake with the precision of someone who spent most of her time learning how to pull individual bones out of someone's hand.

This was a central meeting room for their division, not far from the boardroom where the Judges argued the most, and farther from the other two breakrooms. That had been a recent change, after Artemas had walked into the wrong room accidentally and almost instigated a three-way civil war.

Lune stepped closer to the square centre of the room, turning a slow circle to check all the décor for the party. The tables had been mostly removed and the chairs had been shuffled off to one side where they wouldn't be in the way. The floor remained black-stained rosewood, but the silver rugs had been removed. He paused, wondering what reason there had been for that one, and if he was going to like it. He looked up, eyeing the work of three evidently-enthusiastic Terrestrials armed with ribbons and streamers. The chandelier was almost as much a fire hazard as the idea of Kagaho in the archives was. Upon the table was the cake and an assortment of sandwiches and assorted treats. At least one of those bowls, he was fairly certain, was full of deep-fried candy beetles.

If he was glad about anything, however, it was at least the fact that nobody had found the glitter. His eyes would start hurting, and he'd find it in his bed. He gave a satisfactory nod. "Veronica spearheaded the décor, I see," he remarked. "Looks fine to me. Now we just need to go get everyone, and go find out where Vanessa and Viermer ran off with our judge."

Anna snorted, turning to look at him. "Credit Albafica, he told Vee the plan and to make it happen. We're a few minutes early, but getting people may delay us. Be nice to be, Lune, go see about rescuing some of our Terrestrials."

He snorted right back at her, but called up a teleport all the same, and vanished.

Everyone had settled into their places, finally. Tokusa, Artemas, Theodoros and Eveline had claimed the large couch for their own. Anna was waiting peacefully by Minos' chair, cosmos innocent enough. Albafica had his back to just beside the door, concealing something under his silver cloak. Byaku had settled into an armchair by the cake and Lune had unremorsefully sat directly on top of him. He pressed his back into Byaku's shoulder, finding it comforting after so many years fighting side by side. The cake was set, lunch was ready, the breakroom had been decorated, everyone in the division was present, nothing was on fire that wasn't supposed to be, and a very determined trainee had made a crown of coloured glue and scrap parchment. It looked so stiff from all the glue that it wasn't going to fall over anytime soon.

Then the doors opened, a trainee to either side of the Judge himself, both grinning with mischief and enjoyment.

"Happy birthday!" the room erupted. Minos paused, blinking. It gave Albafica a split second and he stepped forward, spinning on his heel to smack his fiance full in the face with a blackberry meringue pie. Minos froze, wings fluffed out with a started air. Albafica cackled and danced back into a chair, a shit-eating grin on his face that reeked of mirth. Minos stayed frozen where he was, the pie slowly and almost-pathetically sliding off his face and falling to the floor. Vanessa grabbed it, and slipped around him to her seat by Veronica.

"Thank you," Minos said after a moment, his wings settling back down. He had the tightly-clipped voice of someone trying very hard not to laugh, and his cosmos betrayed how funny he actually thought the whole deal was. "I shall have to enter rooms with a wing in front of my face at all times from now on." His voice cracked at the last word, betraying his laughter. Viermer stepped behind him and pushed him forward, Minos going along without a fuss until he was firmly placed in a chair. Anna handed him a facecloth, allowing him to wipe the meringue from his face.

Lune lifted a broken fiddle and a viola's bow to his shoulder. The room took his signal and lifted their own various, also incorrect instruments – a trumpet mouthpiece attached directly to the horn, a broken accordion, an electric guitar paired with a cello bow, a clarinet whose pieces were barely together, a flute mouthpiece duct taped to a recorder.

Minos looked briefly panicked. Anna lifted the cake, its candles now aflame, and they took a breath and began to play and sing.

"Haaaaaappy birthday to youuuu!" Minos' face flushed a deep red, his cosmos flaring pink with embarrassment and mirth. He gave the room an awkward, wide smile and thumbs up, as they all played as out of tune and sang as off-chord as possible. Albafica and Anna finished them off with a drawn-out funeral march's melody, and she held out the cake to him. Minos shook his head a little, smiling, and blew out the candles.

Lune rather thought he could have it worse. They could wait until everyone was dressed up, and then hit him in the face with a pie at dinner, too.


End file.
